The emergence of the Internet, and in particular, broadband connections, along with efficient media compression techniques has lead to rapid growth in the distribution of digital media. Digital audio has preceded digital video in this evolution because its smaller size allowed easier distribution within the constraints of the early Internet and storage systems. Webcasters including Musicmatch, Real Networks, Live365, Launchcast and others began sending digital audio streams to clients across the Internet. While the broadcast media (radio and television) was constrained to relatively small numbers of channels and no interactivity, webcast radio offered a virtually unlimited number of channels with each individual user having the capability interact with their programming.
Music ranking services have typically focused on radio play and sales. While radio play is still very popular, more and more people are listening to music streamed over the Internet and/or downloaded and pre-cached to various communication devices to be listened to at a later time. Rankings based on radio play alone therefore do not take into account a large number of listeners of these streamed and pre-cached multimedia Internet-based services. In addition, the radio rankings are generally based solely on which songs are played by a DJ and do not take into account the number of listeners actually listening to the songs. In addition, radio does not offer any way to sense whether a user listens to a song, turns the radio off when a song is played or changes the channel when a song is played.